The Creative Food Research Collaboratory
The Creative Food Research Collaboratory germinates collaborations at the intersection of art and food studies, exploring how the arts can imagine—and therefore help to achieve—food security, food sovereignty, and food justice in Canada and across the Americas.
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Shalon T. Webber-Heffernan facilitating a public discussion as part of her curatorial and public programming practice. Photo Credit: Photo by Henry Chan

Shalon T. Webber-Heffernan

Shalon T. Webber-Heffernan, PhD is an independent curator, educator, and writer. Curating the Village emerges from a larger research-creation project supported by Balancing Act Canada’s Level UP! initiative, exploring caregiving as a condition that shapes artistic and curatorial labour.

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SA Smythe

SA Smythe is a critical theorist, multi-instrumentalist, and transmedia storyteller whose work conjures black belonging and thriving relations beyond borders. Rooted in this antecartographic practice, Smythe weaves together poetics, performance, interactive light sculptures, soundscape compositions, monoprints, and archival ephemera. Their transmedia works have been featured internationally in solo and collaborative performances, film and multimedia installations, anthologies, and festivals. They currently work as Associate Professor of Black Studies & the Archive at the University of Toronto, where they direct the Collaboratory for Black Poiēsis, a multidisciplinary hub and collaborative atelier dedicated to Black Studies research and Black⇌Indigenous aesthetic interventions.

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Warren Harper
Warren Harper is a curator, researcher, and writer. He holds a PhD from Goldsmiths, University of London, and has worked with a wide range of arts organizations and institutions internationally in diverse roles, roles including Director of Metal Southend, UK and Exhibition Manager at the Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto. Warren is a member of plumb, an ad hoc collective of Toronto-based artists, writers, and curators, and also teaches at the University of Toronto. He has prior governance experience, including serving on boards and establishing a board of trustees for the UK-based arts charity The Old Waterworks. His research interests are at the intersection of art and nuclear culture, ecology, and sustainable and ethical curatorial practices. Warren’s work has also…Find out more

Elida Schogt
Elida Schogt is an award-winning filmmaker, media artist, and writer whose work engages feminist, participatory practices and disrupts power imbalances in storytelling. She brings over 25 years of leadership and governance experience in the arts, most recently as Executive Director of the Media Arts Network of Ontario (MANO), and holds a PhD in Visual Arts from York University.Find out more